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The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
Think of Japan 100 years from now. The average global temperature has risen by up to 6 degrees, and here is no exception. Just as the cherry blossom wave passes up the country each spring, the frontier of many species, both plant and animal, ...
Fire! It’s a word that strikes terror. Images of leaping, roaring, scorching flames spring to mind; images of billowing smoke and suffocating fumes; of people and other creatures great and small fleeing for their lives. Within seconds, the awful, fearful unreality of a major ...
As a family, cats have successfully colonized the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia, with only Australia among the larger landmasses lacking native species. They range in size from the immense Siberian tiger to the diminutive black-footed cat of southern Africa, and take an equally ...
When all that separates you from the night is a thin layer of canvas, and when that night consists of a darkness that is thick and soft like a blanket, sounds seem very close. When it is a deep darkness, peppered from above with ...
It was just a bridge, not even a special bridge. The Heiwa Bridge spans the eastern end of Lake Tofutsu in northeastern Hokkaido. To the north there is a narrow neck of wooded land and then the Okhotsk Sea. To the south lies more ...
Humans like rules as a way of ordering the world into familiar and comfortable patterns. For naturalists, one of the basic rules is the concept of biological species, which forms the basis of modern biodiversity and conservation studies. An iguana unlike any other, being ...
I have dreamed of flying since childhood, and perhaps that is why I am obsessed with flying creatures. As ground-hugging humans, we readily identify with our fellow terrestrial mammals, assuming, easily enough, that being earthbound is a natural state for life on earth. But, ...
They arrive in bunches of bananas; they turn up in containers of vegetables; they sneak in hidden inside rattan and wooden furniture; they disembark from among shipped household possessions, industrial and military equipment. They are as pervasive as the computer server virus Nimda, but, ...
Towering above the surrounding lush summer herb growth stands the hollow-stemmed monster known locally as Ezo nyuu and to botanists as Angelica ursina. These pearl-headed plants appear at the height of summer, a potent reminder that the longest days are past and that, despite ...
Where waves crash across rocky shores there is a narrow region between the uppermost level covered at high tide and the lowest level exposed at low tide, the intertidal zone, that is prolific of life. Living there are seaweeds, shellfish, fish that prefer shallow ...
Humans have an anthropocentric tendency to look down on “cold-blooded” reptiles. We even use the term “cold-blooded” in a derogatory way to criticize people who seem somehow less than human. A marine iguana soaks up solar energy on a rock in the Galapagos Islands. ...
Salt is an interesting mineral. We all need it. It is crucial to the operation of the cells that make up our bodies. The Komodo dragon’s hide resists salt. Too much is bad for us, though, and a salt-rich environment is very hard for ...